Week 28, Big Deal

  YouTube link for iPhone

Every week brings something new and usually leaves sleep deprivation in its place. This week was no exception. I was feeling pretty good about having a song sketched up and drums recorded last weekend. All that I had left to do was throw down electric guitar and bass tracks, write vocals, and then record them. In theory that would have left me some time to begin working on the next track as I’m always trying to make up some time and get back to posting in the beginning of the week. Of course on top of all of that, the in-laws were coming into town to visit and we were having my son’s 3rd birthday party on Saturday, so the house needed to be cleaned… oh and of course it’s March Madness and my team (Pitt) was playing. And as the reigning champion of our office’s bracket contest, I had to put as much love and attention into filling out my brackets as a champion should.

Sounds like a full enough week, right? Nothing like a little adversity to make it interesting. On Friday of last week I got a call from my good friend Dale, who doesn’t call anyone this time of year because he’s crazy-frantic busy working on one of his two major graphic designing jobs, his bread and butter jobs. Dale was calling to see if I could help him compose a score for a TV commercial that he had put together. As someone trying to build a portfolio of production work and carve out a little niche in the music world, you never say no to something like that, no matter how busy you are. I was supposed to hear back from Dale later that weekend, but it never happened, so I figured that he had figured out something on his own. But I ended up hearing from Dale late Tuesday afternoon. He wanted to come over to my house that night and have me record his friend who was going to do the voice-over, and then just “knock-out” the music. He just needed a finished product the next day. No sweat, right? Yikes!

I pulled it off. I was up until 2:30 in the morning working on it, and of course I had to go in to work the next morning. I was tired, I still am, but it all worked out. Also, I almost forgot to mention that my laptop’s power adapter broke last Sunday when I was trying to get my blog post up. I had to finish my post on my computer upstairs. I had done enough up front with the files from my laptop that I was all right, but it was another close call.

So here it is Sunday, and my kid’s birthday party was stellar, the in-laws were great, the house was clean, the brackets were turned in and have subsequently been busted (thanks for nothing Kansas), Pitt’s basketball team is on their way home having put together a better year than anyone had expected but knocked out from the tournament in disappointing fashion, the TV commercial should be up and running locally now, and I have another song posted which hopefully you’ve listened to by now.

On to the music: I’d love to get some feedback on this song. I like it, but this isn’t exactly what I was expecting it to sound like when I wrote it. I think it has a bit of an 80’s college rock feel to it now, but I can’t really put my finger on it. Let me know what you think.

As for the recording, it’s pretty consistent with what I’ve been doing of late. The drums were recorded into Reaper in my home studio with five microphones. There’s an acoustic guitar part, one of the original sketch tracks, that was recorded in MultiTrack using the Blue Mikey. The electric guitar and bass tracks were performed on my Orange 30r and recorded into MultiTrack on my iPhone using the custom break-out cable, and the vocals were recorded using the iPhone’s built in mic.

In my spare time (that’s a joke), I’ve been trying to build my profile on Last.fm. It’s a great site for music lovers. The more you use it, the better it gets at customizing the listening experience to your exact tastes. I’ve been turned on to a bunch of great bands through Last that I never would have heard without it. I recently discovered that Last is a pretty powerful site for artists and labels too. I’ve uploaded Project 52, Volume 1 and have gotten some good feedback so far. I made a bunch of the tracks available for free download, so stop by and grab them if you’d like. I also set up a profile for my old Pittsburgh band, Hovland. I put the album “Affordable Fashion” up for listening and downloading. If you like the music that I’m doing here, you’ll probably like Hovland then. The drummer was super-good too – something that I can’t always say about myself.

I’d encourage everyone who’s not on Last.fm to check it out and see if it’s for you. If you do use Last regularly, friend me at this link.

Developer (this music) is up at http://www.last.fm/music/Developer, and my old band Hovland is at http://www.last.fm/music/Hovland.

Check it out, and I’ll see you next week.

Tags: bandcamp, Cockos, Corey Layman, developer, Harmonicdog, hovland, indie, indie rock, iPhone, Karl Hendricks Trio, Last.fm, lo-fi, MultiTrack, phone-fi, Pitt Basketball, Pittsburgh, podcast, Project 52, Woolslayer and Main